Systems Operations Manager in London

Great opportunity for an Operations Manager if you are numerate and a systems-minded manager.

This is an operations role built on data and systems: you will own the numbers that show how the team is performing.

If you are an operations Manager looking for a change then this could be for you.

The Job

• Own the numbers for the customer team — conversion, contacts per booking, response and resolution times, average booking value, review scores — and build the analysis yourself rather than waiting to be handed it
• Be genuinely fluent in a spreadsheet and comfortable interrogating a report or a database: very little of what you need will arrive pre-packaged
• Own our CRM end to end — the data model, the pipelines, the fields, the automations and the reporting built on top of them.
• You are the person who makes the system work, not the person who raises a ticket about it
• Lead the implementation and ongoing configuration of the CRM alongside the technology team, including data migration, data quality and getting the team to actually use it
• Keep our mid-office and CRM records accurate enough that marketing, finance and product can rely on them without checking
• Design, document and implement the processes the team works to, and keep them current as the systems change around them
• Specify what the team needs from our own technology, bring the evidence for why it should be that and not something else, and test and sign off what gets built
• Report clearly and honestly on team and service performance at our weekly business review — the numbers, what sits behind them, and what you are doing about them
• Understand where the workload actually comes from — by brand, by day, by hour, by type of contact — and staff against the demand rather than against habit
• Build and run the rota: cover across our opening hours, peaks, weekends and absence, without carrying idle capacity in the quiet periods
• Own the customer experience end to end —from enquiry to return
• Take personal ownership of complaints and escalations, and handle the genuinely difficult cases yourself
• Set individual targets, coach against them, and hold people to them fairly and consistently
• Lead, develop and motivate a team of five, with the structure to grow as volume does
• Establish two named specialisms — escalations and travel trade — and support both people into those roles
• Support the growth of our travel trade channel, which we intend to take from a standing start to a meaningful share of sales.

Skills Required

• We want someone used to structured thinking and to handling evidence properly
• Experience gained in an online travel agency, or in a comparable e-commerce business where most transactions complete online and people handle the exceptions
• Genuinely numerate and data-driven: comfortable with conversion rates, average booking value, response times and capacity planning, able to build the analysis yourself, and able to see what is really moving a number
• Hands-on ownership of a CRM — Zoho, Salesforce, Hub Spot or similar.

Not simply using one: configuring it, reporting out of it, automating within it, and getting a team to adopt it

• Experience of implementing a system, or of a significant change to one, together with the processes around it — you will have done this at least once and will know where it goes wrong
• A record of designing and embedding process, rather than working to somebody else’s
• Degree-level education, or equivalent evidence of formal analytical training
• A demonstrable record of running a customer-facing or operational team and improving how it performs — we will want to talk about specific numbers
• Experience managing people directly, including the harder conversations
• Practical experience of rotas, scheduling or capacity planning against uneven demand
• Calm and credible on a complaint: able to step into a difficult case and leave the customer better disposed to us than when it started
• Systems-minded — the instinct to fix the process or the system rather than build a workaround
• Genuinely comfortable with change. This team will look different in eighteen months and you would be the person leading that
• Able to work in a small business where you will do the job as well as manage it

The Package

• £40,000 – £50,000 depending on experience, plus performance bonus
• Hybrid working — 3 days a week (minimum) in our London office
• 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays
• Company pension scheme
• Discounts across every holiday we sell

Interested

• If you are interested in the above role please click to ‘APPLY’ or email your cv to